Modal concepts of particle “ke” in Persian language; an investigation from cognitive semantic point of view

Articles in Press

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Linguistics, Humanities, PNU University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Modal particles and discourse markers are both subsumable under the broad category of pragmatic markers and have taken the same route of evolution, but have different functions. While discourse markers are concerned with textual metafunction and make the discourse cohesive and coherent, modal particles have interpersonal metafunction, establish a discourse interactional relationship between speaker and hearer, and like the other modal elements, reflect the speaker’s attitude and reaction towards the proposition. The element “ke” is one of the active modal particles in Persian that on the basis of Brinton’s (1996) proposed framework, called two-fold approach, and through a basic descriptive research, is brought under investigation. The gathered data belong to colloquial style and are collected in informal situations from the casual conversations among ordinary speakers. This particle, under the process of pragmaticalization, has been derived from the question word “ke” with the meaning ‘who’. This modal particle introduces a wide range of modal notions including threat, indifference, dissatisfaction, objection, responding to objection, surprise, exaggeration, cursing, persuasion, and emphasis. In all of these diverse concepts, the commitment of the speaker, regardless of metalingual and objective evidence, is illuminant therefore these modal concepts are considered as speaker-oriented or subjective.

Keywords

Main Subjects

Persian Language and Iranian Dialects

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 30 August 2026

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